The 1963 Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan featured a front bench seat.
Fans of the front bench seat in cars better scurry to their local Chevrolet dealership to get one of the last 2013 Impalas. That’s because the revamped 2014 model will do away with the bench seat option.
You may have believed that the bench had died with your Aunt Mertyl’s ’82 Plymouth. But it was still available on the full-size Impala, the last car sold in North America to offer it.
Now, for the first time since manufacturers started putting engines in carriages and calling them automobiles, the bench is going away.
Will drive-in movies or cuddling with your sweetheart ever be the same?
The historical significance of eliminating the Impala’s $195 optional bench isn’t lost on General Motors. The automaker’s release points out that its first vehicle, the Series C Classic Six of 1911, featured a front bench seat. Chevrolet will continue to offer bench seats on pickup trucks and sport utilities.
“A lot of people prefer bucket seats because they’re sporty, even in models that aren’t sports cars,” GM Director of Design Clay Dean said. “Our customers also appreciate having the center console as a convenient place to store their phone and other personal items.”
GM said it expects few car buyers to notice the bench’s demise. Still, one in 10 buyers chose the three-across option last year.
While six-passenger seating in cars was at one time important, the need to seat more than five is largely meant these days by three-row vehicles such as minivans, sport utility vehicles and crossovers.
“There is certain nostalgia for bench seats, like being able to snuggle up with your date at a drive-in movie, and some customers still like them,” Dean said. “You never know, we might see bench seats re-emerge someday, possibly in very small cars like the EN-V urban mobility concept vehicle, in which the feeling of open space may be very desirable.”
But for the time being, you’ll just have to move to the back seat – which of course is still a bench in most cars – when you’re with your date at the drive-in.
What? You didn’t know there are still drive-in theaters? Well, that’s another story.
I grew up with bench front seats in the family’s English Vauxhalls and Australian Holdens, sitting seatbelt-less in front of solid metal dashboards with protruding knobs that would give NHTSA heart failure today.
My dad always insisted on the standard bench instead of optional buckets so we could carry up to six in that pre-MPV/minivan era.
A few years ago I rode around Canada in a friend’s 2001 Impala with the split bench and column shifter. The split, with each half indpenedently adjustable, allowed the ideal seat positions for 5 ft 6 in me sitting alongside 6 ft 6 in owner. Yet we could still get six occupants in when needed.
Most won’t miss the bench option in the 2014 Impala. Those that do will have to go find an SUV to suit. End of yet another era…
Hi, Fred, every so often I remember the advantage of having a 6-person sedan with a front bench when we’re forced to take two cars rather than my wife’s 5-seater (well, like many today, it’s really a 4+1). But not having someone in the middle seat, sliding around on the bench while I take a hard corner also makes me appreciate front buckets. These days, it just seems that 3-row CUVs, SUVs or minivans are the route of choice for those who need 6+ seating and the sedan of today is designed to accommodate smaller modern families. But, yes, end of an era.
Paul A. Eisenstein
Publisher, TheDetroitBureau.com
In my view, the demise of the bench seat is another disturbing side effect of the “cocooning” of contemporary autos, which has also saddled us with overly wide center consoles (why are those even necessary in front-drive cars?) and tiny, bunker slit side windows. Counting my 1978 Ford LTD and 1997 Lincoln Town Car, it’s comforting to note that two of the four cars in my household still have column shifters and bench seats, and it was less than four years ago that I also owned a 1999 Mercury Sable wagon making that ratio three-to-one. Aside from its effect on drive-in movie romance – and there IS a drive-in less than three miles from my front door – I’m sure that driving instructors and nervous dads will miss the ability to reach the brake pedal from the front passenger position!
Hi, Merk,
Thank you for your observation. I personally owned a number of early cars with benches up front and could recall a few times driving aggressively where the person in the middle almost wound up driving the car. For those of us to do drive a little, er, hard, the bucket seat was a blessing, especially compared to the vinyl-covered, over-padded benches like I had in my ’62 Chevy Bel Air and ’64 Ford wagon. Then again, yep, the buckets in my ’73 Mazda RX-2 did restrict romance at the now long-gone drive-on on Rte 35 in Hazlet, NJ. In fact, where are you that there’s a drive-in left? There aren’t more than a handful anymore!
While I do agree that benches made it easier to teach driving, meanwhile, I recall my first experience studying under Bob Bondurant when his school was in Sonoma, CA. There was a short back straight, since revised, leading into a 90-degree right turn. I always lifted off the throttle a bit early in the Mustang GTs Bob was running back then. After three laps, he was frustrated enough to lift a leg over the console, around the shifter, and jam my foot to the floor, also grabbing the wheel to guide me through the corner’s best line. I got it right the next lap. I never wanted to go through that again!
Paul A. Eisenstein
Publisher, TheDetroitBureau.com
DEAR PAUL: Aside from sheer driving talent, one thing that separates racers from the average motorist is the fact that they’re generally athletes. I can accordingly imagine Bob Bondurant was still small enough and lean enough to easily throw his leg over a Mustang’s console for many years after he retired from competition. In comparison, I recently drove a Mitsubishi EVO where I actually wound up sitting on the bolsters instead of the cushion between them – that says something truly disturbing (but arguably universal in the U.S.) about the width of my posterior in the wake of my 50th birthday. Just one more reason, no doubt, I envy the folks on Turner Classic Movies who get behind their sterring wheels by sliding over from the curbside door!
LOL…I have experienced the bolster-seating position in a few cars lately. Must be the makers narrowing their seats, of course!
Paul A. Eisenstein
Publisher, TheDetroitBureau.com